Rotor Arcade · Reference
Glossary
An aircrew reference card: short, alphabetised definitions of the flight and mission language used across the games, written for lookup rather than as a lesson. Entries marked Time on Target belong to that mission's command vocabulary and are here ahead of its release.
For a suggested order to meet these terms in the games, see the flight school syllabus.
- Autorotation
- A power-off descent in which air flowing up through the disc keeps the rotor turning. It names both the condition and the manoeuvre flown to manage it, from entry to the flare and cushion.
- BINGO
- The fuel level that requires an immediate return to base: the fuel needed to fly straight home, plus a reserve. Time on Target
- Collective
- The lever that changes blade pitch on every blade at once, the primary control for climb, descent and power.
- Cyclic
- The control that tilts the rotor disc, which is how the aircraft accelerates, decelerates and banks.
- Effective translational lift (ETL)
- The lift gain a rotor picks up as it moves out of its own recycled downwash, felt as the transition out of the hover.
- Envelope
- The position, altitude, speed and attitude window the aircraft must hold for the crew to work the ropes, each with its own tolerance. Tolerances tighten as the sea state rises.
- Ground effect
- The lift bonus from flying within about a rotor diameter of a surface, where downwash cushions against the ground or deck instead of dispersing. Hovering there is in ground effect (IGE); clear of it, out of ground effect (OGE).
- Initial point (IP)
- The last turn point before the run-in to the objective, placed so the final leg arrives from the planned direction. Time on Target
- JOKER
- An earlier, advisory fuel call than BINGO: a heads-up to start planning the return before BINGO forces it. Time on Target
- Masking
- The use of terrain or cover to break a threat's line of sight. Time on Target
- NR (rotor speed)
- Rotor RPM. Lift scales with its square, so a small droop in NR costs more lift than it looks like it should.
- Power margin
- The gap between the power an engine can deliver and the power a manoeuvre demands, eaten by altitude, heat and load.
- Time on target (TOT)
- The planned arrival time at the objective. Missions are graded on how close the flight actually arrives to it, inside a scored window. Time on Target